Chronicle January 2021

18 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Affection for Times Past Glancing through a pile of books being prepared for the move to the Christie Centre last term, the Warden made a wonderful discovery. He happened upon The Oliviers by Felix Barker, a biography of Laurence Olivier and his second wife, Vivien Leigh, published in 1953. Tucked inside the book were two original letters, reprinted below. Barker’s account of Olivier’s schooldays paints a fairly bleak picture. ‘It takes a special sort of talent to be popular and successful at a public school’, writes Barker – ‘To be different from the crowd is fatal.’ Olivier ‘had an eccentricity not calculated to endear him to the other boys. To be deeply religious was an

inexplicable and suspect deviation from the normal. A chap who actually enjoyed chapel was really beyond the pale!’ Olivier’s love of the theatre, though, was evident even then, and produced happier times. His aforementioned performance as Puck was much admired and, according to Barker, he once risked serious punishment by slipping out of School to visit the New Theatre in the centre of Oxford to see a play. It is wonderful now to have the letters which, as Olivier himself says, convey much more affection for Teddies than is palpable within Barker’s pages.

The entrance to the Olivier Hall